Does the AI have hidden Cavalry bonuses?

[Akboris]

Ive noticed that the AI is able to use cavalry just terribly and get away with it.

Whereas whenever I use cavalry the slightest imperfection and I lose tons of units.

An example is the AI basically walking into my spearmen and just hacking and slashing everyone and taking a heavy beating before dropping. If I touch even militia with the heaviest cavalry its an instance death sentence.

To add to this (or maybe it is a part of it) - cavalry vs cavalry in this game is not a thing. Its as if it isnt calculated. The outcome of a cavalry engagement feels totally random.

I charged and circled 1 unit of Feudal knights with 1 Ritterbruder and 2 Feudal knights. I lost 100 ♥♥♥♥ing knights. This happens frequently, with superior tactics and forces losing cavalry engagements with no explanation.

I tried the exact engagement again. I took a full brunt of the charge, encircled the unit and lost only 15.

[Inardesco]

No. AI hardly gets any bonusses. Th only battle bonus they get is a morale bonus which is completely negligible.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Inardesco:

No. AI hardly gets any bonusses. Th only battle bonus they get is a morale bonus which is completely negligible.

Are you sure about that? AI gets combat bonuses in every TW.

[Inardesco]

Yes. Rome and Medieval 2 AI's are the least cheaty of them all.

[Gigantus]

It's mostly about the charge distance, eg is the cav unit formed properly and at full speed when hitting the defender?
And the attack angle relative to the defender plays a huge role as well.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Mile pro Libertate:

Originally posted by Inardesco:

No. AI hardly gets any bonusses. Th only battle bonus they get is a morale bonus which is completely negligible.

Are you sure about that? AI gets combat bonuses in every TW.

Originally posted by Inardesco:

Yes. Rome and Medieval 2 AI's are the least cheaty of them all.

What I meant was, the buff is still pretty significant, isn't it? Iirc, don't AI get like up to +8 morale buff on VH?

[Ashur_Arbaces]

Originally posted by Inardesco:

Yes. Rome and Medieval 2 AI's are the least cheaty of them all.

In Rome they get +4 attack and defense on hard and +8 attack and defense on hardest and on the campaign map they get armies and family members out of thin air. It cheats super hard.

[Inardesco]

Originally posted by Ashur_Arbaces:

Originally posted by Inardesco:

Yes. Rome and Medieval 2 AI's are the least cheaty of them all.

In Rome they get +4 attack and defense on hard and +8 attack and defense on hardest and on the campaign map they get armies and family members out of thin air. It cheats super hard.

Thats rubbish. If I go into custom battle, very hard, and pit 2 peasants against each other the winner will always be the one that kills the enemy captain first.

Family members come from adoptions, available to the player, only difference is that the AI always accepts them and they never get armies out of thin air.

If they get +8 attack and defence then peasants would easily beat sergeant speamen, which they dont.

[Shadow of the SPQR]

AI armies out of thin air is a complete result of them being offered cheats to suppelment their income (otherwise they easily fall into complete debt) and population booms that inevitably result in a massive upwards spike that makes virtually every ai city a huge city or a citadel in not terribly much time in the bigger picture. Attack and defense in combat, if present, are negligible. Morale is the core metric, and that hardly saves them. The artificial difficulty is present on the campaign map, but in all ways is far more weaksauce than any later entry. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ army spam reminiscent of later entries is a field entered by mods using scripting to make the AI cheat more and give more of a challenge, not something of vanilla.

[Inardesco]

All these things are all mod-related. Vanilla AI does not get any buffs, easy to see when you look through the campaign_script.

Why do you think the first script to help the AI was a bankruptcy script?

Cuz the AI goes bankrupt real easy and then grinds to a halt.

The AI armies "appearing' out of thin air is nothing more than AI losing an army and suddenly all their settlements go into recruitment overdrive because money is available.

[Ashur_Arbaces]

Originally posted by Inardesco:

Originally posted by Ashur_Arbaces:

In Rome they get +4 attack and defense on hard and +8 attack and defense on hardest and on the campaign map they get armies and family members out of thin air. It cheats super hard.

Thats rubbish. If I go into custom battle, very hard, and pit 2 peasants against each other the winner will always be the one that kills the enemy captain first.

Family members come from adoptions, available to the player, only difference is that the AI always accepts them and they never get armies out of thin air.

If they get +8 attack and defence then peasants would easily beat sergeant speamen, which they dont.

The AI in rome gets armies out of thin air 1000000%. No ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ way they get them all legitimatly. I've literlly seen isolated armies in my territory 3 regions away from their homeland in my line of sight and never leaving it, consisting of 1 unit of spear warband get a general the next turn with 10 non mercenary units on top of it. This is a recurring thing too.

[Akboris]

Originally posted by Inardesco:

All these things are all mod-related. Vanilla AI does not get any buffs, easy to see when you look through the campaign_script.

Why do you think the first script to help the AI was a bankruptcy script?

Cuz the AI goes bankrupt real easy and then grinds to a halt.

The AI armies "appearing' out of thin air is nothing more than AI losing an army and suddenly all their settlements go into recruitment overdrive because money is available.

Love this game but cant help be frustrated at the fact that killing armies really doesnt do anything. As you've said, the AI pulls money out its ass and instantly materializes a new doomstack to replace it. I would say that the AI regicides itself doing this, but it often doesnt bother to send a general with them, meaning you get literally nothing from spending ages killing a huge army.

[Aquilifer]

It can depend on a few things, most importantly, whether the cavalry unit is doing a proper charge (lances forward, coherent unit structure) and if the target has readied itself. Also there is a bug where if you get your cavalry to switch to their secondary attack (Alt+attack) and order them to run through the enemy cav, they destroy them without taking too many casualties. Not guaranteed to work, but sometimes the AI does that and it's a pain in the arse.

[Inardesco]

Originally posted by Akbarogo:

Originally posted by Inardesco:

All these things are all mod-related. Vanilla AI does not get any buffs, easy to see when you look through the campaign_script.

Why do you think the first script to help the AI was a bankruptcy script?

Cuz the AI goes bankrupt real easy and then grinds to a halt.

The AI armies "appearing' out of thin air is nothing more than AI losing an army and suddenly all their settlements go into recruitment overdrive because money is available.

Love this game but cant help be frustrated at the fact that killing armies really doesnt do anything. As you've said, the AI pulls money out its ass and instantly materializes a new doomstack to replace it. I would say that the AI regicides itself doing this, but it often doesnt bother to send a general with them, meaning you get literally nothing from spending ages killing a huge army.

It doesnt pull money out of its ass.

If you destroy an army thats worth 3k in upkeep thats 3k of extra income for the AI to spend.

The AI being the AI tends to focus troops more than buildings and vanilla having a 1 turn recruitment for pretty much everything and you should easily see why and how they get a new army really quickly.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Inardesco:

Originally posted by Akbarogo:

Love this game but cant help be frustrated at the fact that killing armies really doesnt do anything. As you've said, the AI pulls money out its ass and instantly materializes a new doomstack to replace it. I would say that the AI regicides itself doing this, but it often doesnt bother to send a general with them, meaning you get literally nothing from spending ages killing a huge army.

It doesnt pull money out of its ass.

If you destroy an army thats worth 3k in upkeep thats 3k of extra income for the AI to spend.

The AI being the AI tends to focus troops more than buildings and vanilla having a 1 turn recruitment for pretty much everything and you should easily see why and how they get a new army really quickly.

I know for certain that in the Kingdoms campaigns AI can definitely get instant units and instant money.

In the Britannia campaign, for example, when factions are really being pressed hard, and they're near extinction, they get massive influx of money, extra units, and sometimes, depending on the map situation, they even get regions added to their ownership and instant, special stacks that come with unique units, such as returning Crusaders.

Granted, in Med 2 base it doesn't have the same scripts, but still, the AI gets massive cash influxes.

[Inardesco]

I havent looked at the scripts for the Kingdoms campaigns but the only scripts working for the vanilla campaign are the mongol and timurid invasion scripts.